Over the past few years, one of the largest evolutionary changes in the digital home environment is the Digital Video Recorder (DVR) experience. Although the basic functionality is based off of decades-old techniques (VCRs), one of the key defining features of DVRs is the ability to schedule recording based on metadata. VCR recording is limited to metadata like TIME and DATE. DVRs, with their access to greater metadata, are able to schedule recording based off of but not limited to series information.
However, as recognized herein there are limitations with these types of devices. Some examples include long waiting times between demand for the show and having the show available to watch, as well as the requirement for user interaction, in which the user must consciously decide whether to record or download a show. This leads to another limitation, namely, if the user decides mid-season that he would like to watch/record another series, typically he must wait for re-runs, to view episodes that have already aired.
Additionally, as understood herein transferring content, e.g., over the Internet, at the time of selection requires considerable time to download a media file and even more time to download multiple media files. Additionally, downloading a file at the fastest speed can saturate the users bandwidth, adversely affecting the rest of the network activities. As a consequence, web browsing is slowed, online gaming acquires jitter, etc.
Accordingly, the present invention critically recognizes that it would be desirable to provide an automated method of selecting shows. The present invention also critically recognizes that in addition or in lieu of the above it would be desirable to provide an optimized way of making the data available for viewing by both predictive transfers and trickle down bandwidth usage.